Term Paper on "Concrete History"

Term Paper 10 pages (3333 words) Sources: 3 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Concrete

HISTORY of CONCRETE

The history of concrete goes back about twelve million years according to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (www.matse1.mse.uiuc.edu).What happened back then was that limestone and oil shale mixed to create a "spontaneous combustion" in what is now the country of Israel, and the result of that combustion was the formation of cement compounds. In 3,000 BC the Egyptians mixed mud and straw to "bind" dried bricks. They also used gypsum mortars and mortars of lime in the building of the pyramids. In 800 BC the Greeks on Crete and Cyprus used lime mortars that "were much harder" than the mortars used later in history by the mortars.

The Romans used "pozzolana cement" from the Mt. Vesuvius region to build their Roman baths, the Coliseum and the Pantheon. There was a period in the Middle Ages when the use of pozzolan materials was "lost," according to the University of Illinois data; then in the 17th and 18th Centuries experiments with limestone, hydraulic cement (stucco), calcareous cements produced various adaptations of what we now know as concrete (cement is an ingredient of concrete). In 1824 Joseph Aspdin of England invented "Portland cement" by burning "finely ground chalk with finely divided clay in a limekiln until carbon dioxide as driven off."

In 1887 Henri Le Chatelier of France was first to establish "oxide ratios" in order to prepare the proper amount of lime to produce Portland cement. His components (he named them) include: alite, Belite, and Celite. In 1889 the first concrete reinforced bridge was built, and in 1903 the first concrete high rise building was built in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1936, the first "major concrete dams, Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee Dam," were constructed. The Federal Interstate Highway Act was signed into law in 1956.

Another of the forerunners to today's concrete was "grout"; and according to the Milton House Museum in Milton, Wisconsin, the Milton House (built in 1844) is the "oldest poured grout (concrete) structure in the United States" (www.miltonhouse.org).The builder, Joseph Goodrich, reportedly made architectural and structural history with his hexagon-shaped hotel and tavern. He used "slaked (burnt) lime, sand broken stone, gravel and water, all materials were native to southern Wisconsin. He used one bushel of lime to every seven or eight bushels of gravel. What was truly unique about this grout building was that Goodrich was a stopover for runaway slaves as part of the Underground Railroad. He built a tunnel under the Milton House which led to a cabin out back, where the runaways could have safe hiding until being spirited away into northern Wisconsin or Minnesota; there, they were given jobs on farms, safe from bounty hunters.

DIFFERENT KINDS of CONCRETE

First of all, what is concrete? According to the Physics Factbook (a project of Brooklyn College's Advanced Placement Physics teacher Glenn Elert and his students) concrete is the "artificial material similar to stone" used in a variety of structural environments. It is made by mixing several different "coarse aggregates such as sand and pebbles with water and cement" - followed by a process of letting it harden by hydration. What does hydration do? It causes crystals to form and the crystals "interlock and bind together." The Physics Factbook quotes the Brooklyn Public Library as claiming the first concrete was made in 500 BC, and that concrete can last "up to 50,000 years."

There are several kinds of concrete; reinforced concrete is one that is very important, and is strengthened by steel; to make this product, concrete is cast around steel rods or bars for reinforcement. Bridges and large buildings use this strategy for extra strong applications of concrete. Then there is "pressed concrete" which is produced by casting concrete around steel cables that are stretched by hydraulic jacks. Once the concrete hardens, according to the Physics Factbook, the jacks are released and the cables compress the concrete. After all, concrete is at its strongest and hardest when it is compressed. Roofs, floors, and other surfaces are where compressed concrete is most appropriately used. Precast concrete is used in building materials when there is a need for "a mass number of concrete building materials" - usually as blocks. About two-thirds of masonry walls in the United States are composed of precast concrete blocks.

Another kind of concrete is called "air-entrained" which is used for areas with very harsh, cold weather; airport runways and roads in cold climates utilize air-entrained concrete. High-early-strength concrete hardens quickly and is lighter than ordinary concrete because it is made with pumice. It is used in "hurried jobs and cold weather," the Physics Factbook explains. The normal density of concrete is 2,400 kg/m3; but the density of lightweight concrete is 1,750 kg/m3. Typically, the average density of concrete is 2,300 kg/m3.

The most common kinds of concrete that are available in homebuilding and commercially, as explained by the Robinson-Vitale Companies in New York State, are "interior" concrete and "exterior" concrete. When freezing will occur, exterior concrete is vital, but where there will never be any freezing, interior concrete is appropriate. As explained in the previous material in this paper, the air-entrainment approach is used in concrete that will be outdoors in harsh weather. Robinson-Vitale's Web site: (http://www.robinsonrolloff.com) explains that air entrainment - when "mixed properly in the batch" - will produced "countless numbers of microscopic air pockets."

Those tiny air pockets then allow space for the moisture that will be drawn into the concrete to expand during the time when moisture freezes. Why the air pockets? The analogy is this: if you fill a glass jar up to the top, cap it and put it into the freezer, it will shatter. There is no room for expansion. Fill it only part way up, and it won't shatter because there is room to expand. Cold expands and heat contracts, and it is true even with a very hard substance like concrete. For building purposes, concrete is broken down into "footing mix" and "slab mix," according to Robinson-Vitale companies. A mix of 2,500 Psi is a basic footing mix, and there are higher mixtures, up to 3,000, 3,500, and 4,000 and beyond.

DIFFERENT APPLICATIONS of CONCRETE

Recycling and sustainability issues: The company "Cement Americas" - in a section called "Cement, Concrete and the Environment" - explains that the use of concrete "...minimizes the depletion of our natural resources." The ingredients come from "water, aggregate (sand and gravel or crushed stone), and cement." And since cement is composed of 75% limestone (the most common mineral on the planet), and supplies of limestone are "virtually inexhaustible" - and the extracting raw materials for concrete has a lower impact on the environment than many other construction materials - concrete is relatively resource efficient. There is always a price to pay when digging in the earth, extracting minerals for building, but Cement Americas claims that quarries, which are the primary source of raw materials, can readily be "reclaimed for recreational, residential, or commercial development." They can also be restored fairly easily "to their natural state."

Concrete is nearly inert, so it is "quite suitable" as a medium for recycling waste or other industrial byproducts, Cement Americas asserts. Materials that would normally be dumped into landfills are today useful in the making of concrete. Aggregate can contain blast furnace slag, which is a byproduct of steel making. Just about all concrete contains "fly ash," which is a byproduct of coal-fired electric generating plants, Cement American explains on their Web site. There are about twenty million tons of fly ash that are produced annually, and seven million of those twenty million are used in making concrete. Making cement is a useful way to utilize certain waste materials, like scrap tires, which have high energy content and they "supplement coal as a fuel," the Web site explains. As from coal combustion, fly ash from power stations, and mill scale and foundry sand from steel casting provide "the silica, calcium, alumina and iron" that are needed as products for the making of cement. "Even kiln dust, a solid waste" that is generated by the manufacturing of cement, can be recycled back into the kiln as a raw material.

Even old abandoned chunks of concrete can be recycled and used as aggregate for new concrete mixtures, Cement Americas continues. Concrete yields "45% to 80% usable coarse aggregate" and it can be reused by crushing it with other materials that go into the making of new concrete. The energy efficiency of concrete is well-known; the only energy intensive ingredient that goes into concrete is Portland cement, and cement is only 10% to 15% of concrete. The other ingredients previously mentioned of course are aggregate and water, which have los energy requirements.

And what are the costs in terms of transporting concrete? Cement Americas says those costs are generally low because most concrete "is produced locally." Fuel requirements for the transportation and handling of concrete are "minimized" because "at least 60%… READ MORE

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